In 2013, I undertook a big project that I felt ill-equipped to handle: composing the music for a short film - a black and white western noir titled "Savage Noir". There was no expectation of payment, so it was a labor of love; a way to get experience in a field I was very interested in at the time. I had a blast composing some simple themes and using them as a basis for elaboration throughout the film. This clip is the hero's theme from that composition, serving as a transition from side A to side B of this album.

Theme from "Savage Noir"

“Lonely Nights”
Stealth Like a Canoe (2008)
Written by Adam Gramling and Nicolette Fendon

The original version of this song, by Adam G (see above) and Nicolette Fendon (more about her later), literally brought tears to my eyes more than once. So to recap, Adam was a master melodist, but when these two sang together, their harmonies were the show-stopper. Add in the fact that they were a real-life couple and you couldn’t help but be moved listening to them sing duets together. I played with them for a while, as a kind of squeaky third wheel in Stealth Like a Canoe and Tiger Cry. I can’t sing or harmonize, so this version really only exists to let you know how PERFECT the original is and how I wish TO GOD you could hear it. Ending guitar solo lifted almost note-for-note from Adam's original. I am not an artist.

(photo of Nicolette and Adam, with me, squeaky third-wheeling in the background, per usual)

Written by Adam Gramling and Nicolette Fendon

Lonely Nights

“Won’t You Be”
The Potatomen (1995)
Written by Larry Livermore

The first song on this collection from a band that I have no connection with. This song is from the bay-area band The Potatomen and their A+ album Now. Lord, this album is so great. It holds up thirty years later. Go check it out now! Anyway, Larry Livermore, who founded Lookout! Records for Christsakes (that’s the label that “discovered” Green Day btw) fronted The Potatomen. They played at Minot’s Liberty Tavern in ‘95 or ‘96, and I was there in the front row, with safety pins in my ears and a yellow t-shirt with Doctor Prince, Orthodontist on the front. Mid-set, Mr. Livermore, clearly running low on stage banter between songs, said “Doctor Prince? Is that your actual orthodontist? Because if so, that’s hilarious.” I was too shy to reply, and the state of my teeth would give away that I had never been to an orthodontist. [Doctor Prince, Orthodontist, was in fact, the sponsor of my 5th grade little league team in Dickinson, ND]

(unknown photographer, from the Potatomen show at Minot's Liberty Tavern)

Written by Larry Livermore and The Potatomen! Support bands! Buy their album here: thepotatomen.bandcamp.com/album/now

Won't You Be

“Sun Drop”
Klickitat County (2002)
Written by James Robert Rascoe

Another tune dating to my time on the USS Carl Vinson. There, I met James Rascoe and Jack Brett, two guys who could fingerpick acoustic guitars and harmonize like Simon and Garfunkel. Having all but given up on music in favor of the Nuclear Navy, I suddenly found myself ordering an Ibanez El Capitan acoustic bass and having it sent to the aircraft carrier. The shipping and handling fees cost more than the instrument itself! James Rascoe wrote this song, and like so many of his tunes, it has haunted me since I first heard it. We played this song and many others (as Klickitat County, later Sheriff John Stone, and even later As 40 Sleeps) at open mics around Seattle, in Guam, and at sea for Steel Beach Picnics and battles of the bands.

This was a fun one to record: I taped it at an even slower tempo, and then fed it through a time stretcher to speed it up, which caused some interesting (to me at least) artifacts in the final sound.

Sun Drop

“Out After 10”
TC/BK/JS (2022)
Written by Tommy Crawford and Brady Knippenberg

One of the most recent originals in this collection, and a joy to record. During the pandemic, my good friend Tommy Crawford decided to keep sane by making music together (isolated, of course) with our mutual friend Brady Knippenberg. TC would record 16 or so measures of piano and drum parts into Garageband, then send it to BK and me, so we could record our parts, and we’d continue like that until we had most of a song down. In the summer of 2022, we decided to get together in person to try to record a new song in just one day. TC wrote lyrics that afternoon, then he and I went to BK and Amy’s place where BK recorded his guitar part. I laid down a bassline and TC recorded a vocal part. We had some beers and chilled while BK and AA’s kiddo Sam slept upstairs. Somehow, by the next day, the entire recording was lost, which is kind of beautiful if you think about it. Music can be eternal, but sometimes, it just floats into your ears, and then it’s gone. When I sat down to re-record this two years later, I had no idea what the original sounded like anymore, so I recorded this version. For the astute listener, you’ve already heard this exact chord progression — albeit a bit faster — in one of the previous four songs. A master composer, I am not. But I do love Tommy’s lyrics (which become truer the older I get), especially considering he wrote them in less than a day. Expletives are all mine, not blaming Tommy for that trash! 

Written by Tommy Crawford IV and Brady Knippenberg

Out After 10

“Midnite Snack”
The Fucknutz (1996)

The Fucknutz was a band that was created and dissolved on the same day, at a community recreation center room on the Minot Air Force Base. We were a band long enough to record two songs into a cassette player we brought with us. Good high school buddies BJ Moore and Aaron Davis both played the same drum kit, I screamed/freestyled(?) and we were fortunate enough to have a real bass player, Aaron Ripplinger, joining us for this session. I’m not sure how he came to be there with us, because none of us really hung out with Rip, but I’m so glad he was involved. I tried to recreate the rehearsal demo pretty true to the original here, including the lyrics, which were mostly ad-libbed and impossible to discern. Jeffrey Dahmer was recently in the news.

Midnite Snack

“Birth Rite”
Destroying Babel (1997)
Written by Aaron Davis and Brad Stuckey

Aaron Davis. Yeah. One of the first good dudes I met after I moved to Minot, mid-eighth grade. He wore a Nirvana "Incesticide" t-shirt sitting next to me in Social Studies. We got along immediately. He started playing electric guitar about the same time I bought my first bass (a second-hand Peavey T-40 for $150 on layaway at Star Guitar in Minot). Aaron’s parents, Jill and Barry, graciously let us make noise in Aaron’s attic bedroom, or in the summers, on the roof of their carport in the alley. We’d play badly-rendered Nirvana and Metallica covers through cheap amplifiers. By the time we were Juniors, we had refined our sound somewhat and began playing as Destroying Babel - to this day, one of the coolest band names, IMO. Babel also included BJ Moore (drums) and Brad Stuckey (vox) who you might remember from the Snotrockets. Big thanks to BJ and Jason Brown for digitizing our rehearsal cassette, allowing me to recreate this song, all the way down to the vocals sung through a cheap guitar amp. Crank this one loud.

Original lyrics by Brad Stuckey and Aaron Davis. These lyrics by Josh Sauvageau, from a notebook of lyrics I wrote in 1997.

BIRTH RITE!

“All These Feelings”
RT (2013)
written by Adam Gramling

I met Adam Gramling while working at Borders Books, my first job upon moving to Chicago in 2007. Somehow we started sharing songs we’d recorded with one another, and soon we were playing music together in a band called Stealth Like a Canoe (later Tiger Cry). When that band dissolved, Adam and I continued playing together in a project called RT. Adam played piano, Rhodes, guitar, and vocals, and I tried not to ruin his lovely songs. Adam is a gorgeous melodist; if I could compose even one melody like the dozens that have poured from his fingertips, I would die happy. Anyway, one day he presented “All These Feelings” to me, hoping I would sing lead on it. Now, good people, I am not a singer, as you’ve probably already discovered two songs in, but the power of these lyrics and the Everly Brothers-esque harmonies hooked me, so I agreed. Performing this song in front of a live audience was anxiety-provoking to the maximum, but afterward, I had never felt so proud of myself. I love this song, and as a tip of the hat to Adam, I included an extended Rhodes flourish to conclude (a signature AG move).

All These Feelings

“Vampyres & Werewolves”
The Atomic Snotrockets (1995)

I was on the cusp of turning 16 when I wrote this — my first ever song, for my first ever band. The Atomic Snotrockets (later shortened to Snotrockets) was: BJ Moore (band leader, guitarist, drummer, vocalist, junior), Brad Stuckey (drummer, guitarist, vocalist, freshman), and myself (a sophomore, on bass & vocals). The original song clocked in at about thirty seconds and like all our songs, was loud, screamy, and spiky. Nonetheless, our first show was at a quiet coffee shop (Sweetheart’s) on Minot’s Main Street, just a block or so away from the just-closed Minot Collective Cultural Centre a.k.a MC3 — more on that later. The Atomic Snotrockets would rehearse so loudly in BJ's family's garage, that the neighbors routinely called the cops on us. We recorded our own demo onto a cassette, which I'd play in the stereo of my 1984 VW Golf while BJ and I made out with our girlfriends. Ah, young love in Minot, North Dakota in the mid-90s...

(Written by Josh Sauvageau, aged 15, several years before "Twilight" was popular.)

Out After 10

Shimmering Cinnamon

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